


What Piko’s discontinuation means for the future of Vocaloid

by HandmaidenOfHorror



Series: Vocaloid and Utau Meta [4]
Category: Vocaloid
Genre: Future of Vocaloid, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:29:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29825685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandmaidenOfHorror/pseuds/HandmaidenOfHorror
Summary: Vocaloid is not dying, but some Vocaloids are. Ironically, discontinuation of Utatane Piko opens the doors that may lead to the future Hatsune Miku comes from - where nearly all Vocaloid music is lost. Now extended to cover more of my thoughts on current Vocaloid scene.
Series: Vocaloid and Utau Meta [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2189031
Kudos: 2
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	What Piko’s discontinuation means for the future of Vocaloid

In July 2020, it was discovered that Sony’s Utatane Piko Vocaloid was out of stock. The brand, the rival of Vocaloid software license holder Yamaha, has no interest of reissuing the outdate second generation voicebank nor in releasing a fourth generation version of it. While second generation Vocaloid voicebanks were compatible with third generation Vocaloid software, receiving a patch matching them with fourth generation software was possible only through official means. In other words, you cannot simply download Piko, making the voicebank slowly becoming a lost technology.

What does it mean for Vocaloid as a whole? One one hand, you cannot make one to one comparison. The owners of intellectual property rights to Piko lost interest in the program even before its release, making it becoming a discontinued a foregone conclusion. At the same time, Piko was among the most popular Vocaloid voicebanks – sure, he has few original songs, but frequently appears in covers of other Vocaloids’ songs and various virtual boybands. Indeed, the voicebank was more popular than several newer characters! So, what are my preditions?

Sadly, I believe Piko starts a trend of companies abandoning older characters, particularly ones that were never popular to begin with like Chika. It’s really sad, because Vocaloids are more than just programs, they are distinct musical instruments. Can you imagine a world in which viola is no longer used? Sure, you can try to use violin in viola pieces, just as you can use carefully tuned Kagamine Len in place of Utatane Piko, but it wouldn’t be exactly the same. And I feel that in the future we will loose more Vocaloids.

What can fans who want to still create music using „endangered” and discontinued voicebanks do? I don’t really know. I **think** you might be able to find pirated voicebanks online and try to use it on earlier generation Vocaloid software (bought second-hand or likewise pirated), but I have never really looked into the problem. In the end, we may end up in a situation where the only voicebanks avaiable are like ten currently most popular Japanese products, various Hatsune Miku clones (which frustratingly dominate the new releases going as far back as the dawn of third generation), and maybe a small number of voicebanks using other languages. But, like I said, I cannot really tell.

Now time for a little bit of salt regarding the most popular voicebanks.

Divine Diva, in most strict sense, is a virtual girl group created by producer Umetora. Umetora uses Miku, Rin, Luka, Gumi and IA to create multi-Vocaloid songs, usually sexual in lyrics and themes. A tame song called „Red Star” can be listened to in video below.

That's really cool, isn’t it? Unfortunately, that’s some of the very best tunning you can get with these characters. Usually Divas other than Luka tend to sound like little girls with very high voices. And that wouldn’t be that much of a problem if not for the fact that nearly every new Vocaloid song features at least one Diva! Looking at the Top 100 most watched original Vocaloid songs (according to Nico Nico view counts), we have:

-three Len solos (Servant of Evil, Butterfly on Your Right Shoulder, Gigantic P*n*s)

-two Miku/Kaito duets (Cantarella, Cendrillon) – both dating to the era when there were only three Japanese Vocaloids avaiable

-one song by Otomachi Una (Huge Ego), Yuzuki Yukari (Chururira Chururira Daddadda!) and Flower (Charles) each – Una has a very high pitched voice, to the point of being barely distinguishable from Rin, but usually deep-sounding Yukari and Flower were tuned here to have high-pitched, girly voices in these songs to fit the example of (poorly tuned) Divas

-one Rin/Len duet – Trick and Treat by Oster Project

-one song featuring multiple Vocaloids – Bad End Night by teamOS

The other 90 songs? All are Divine Divas singing solo or with another Diva. Though it’s kinda mildly put, as Luka has only two solo songs on the toplist – Luka Luka Night Fever and Double Lariat. It makes the whole toplist very monotonous to listen to. Paradoxically, in 2010, when we had fewer programs to use and Diva supremacy would have been more understandable, the list didn’t used to look like that – sure, we had lots of Miku, Rin and Gumi, but Luka and Len were much more prominent and at that point every Vocaloid in existence had at least one song on the Top 100 list, including nowadays long-discontinued English-language ones like Leon, Lola and Miriam. On Nico Nico Douga! Being a Vocaloid fan simply meant listening to more diverse music than today – even most of the non-Diva songs on the current toplist tend to be both old (in Vocaloid terms of course) and at the lower places.


End file.
